Spring, Aries and The Road Ahead
Magic to set intention for the zodiacal year
This past weekend, I held my class, “Alligator Lizards,” a monthly artistic dialogue with peak experiences, whether from entheogens, meditations or dreams, at The Alembic in Berkeley, CA. I have been saving magazines and catalogues for this class for the last many months because the theme was collage.
Collage, like many of the other surrealist art-making techniques I use and love, is a really wonderful way of taking found images and creating something alive and new out of them. In the way we did these, however, we left a lot more open to chance and chaos than what one usually does.
Instead of just making a collage for collage’s sake, I had everyone get in touch with a dream, vision, or peak experience that was really alive for them. And because this is a technique I have done two years in a row myself, I will also share it with you so that you can try doing this at home if you wish.
Intention Collage, 2023
Above is the collage I made last year. I had just started back at work and quitting my job to do my art full-time seemed like a pipe dream. Yet looking at it with 2024 eyes, so many things in here came true and manifested themselves in my life.
The sun is in Aries in the Western Tropical Zodiac until April 19, so you’ve got until then to get this done. Aries is the sign of beginnings, of the rush of spring and the all-out intense bloom and almost unbridled growth the northern hemisphere experiences at this time of year. It’s a great time to set things in motion.
This collage practice isn’t a storyboard, but rather a collaboration with the unconscious to put an intention for things to happen as well as follow the nudge and include words and images that you may not know why are there. It’s a sigil for all intents and purposes and it also collapses the next 12 zodiacal months into things that are both known and unknown about the year. But how, you ask? The unconscious mind is a vast and mysterious thing. Who knows. But like many things like this, it works.
Intention Collage, 2024
Collect magazines, catalogues, and whatever comes in the mail over the next week or so. Once you have a pile of a few things, start cutting out whatever you are drawn to. Don’t think about it too hard, in fact, the less you think about it, the better. Just let your spidey sense guide your hand. Once you have a small pile of things cut out, begin to arrange them. You’ll know when you have enough. I love using a good glue stick for this and I recommend you acquire one if you don’t already own one. It’ll feel like you are in kindergarten and you can thank me later. Remember, you aren’t making an image, per se, just putting all of your pieces together in an arrangement that feels correct. Do your spidey senses need a little work? It’s ok, I bet most of ours do. Just gently push through the uncomfortable feelings and keep going. You are doing it right.
Once you have your final collage take a moment to reflect on it. There will be things that resonate now and there will definitely be things in there that have no present meaning but just “needed to be there.” That’s perfect. Now put it someplace you won’t lose it but somewhere you can forget about it for the next year. Check back with the piece in February next year and see how much more of the collage came to fruition over the course of the year!
Have fun!
It’s the 4 year anniversary of The Visions Train, an incredible project started during lockdown in 2020 by Amanda Sage. It was a 24 hour nonstop zoom room kept alive round the clock by visionary artists around the world and it is still going today! I did a weekly offering called Mythology Cafe for a year and a half. In celebration of the anniversary, I am teaming up with one of my incredible cohosts, Elisa, and doing a 3-hour long “trip” called “Myth Making: Creative Writing and Discussion on Myths and Folklore.” The Vision Train is free and accessible to anyone, artist or not. Hop on this Thursday, March 28th, and join us! Bring your favorite myth to share if you feel called to do so. Join HERE for our trip or hop on anytime and check it out!
Here’s my recent YouTube video of a Still Life from start to finish done in the Mische Technique. I did this painting as a demo for a class called The Stillness of Life with the nascent Vitra Academy and the Vision Train folks.